School scandal: Mystery man ran companies out of Tacoma house

TACOMA – A non-descript brown house with a heavy door and a “no solicitors” sign stands at the dead end of a south Tacoma street.

It’s home to David A. Johnson and two companies – Grace of Mercy and Allstate Surveillance & Security – and, according to the Washington state Auditor, $353,000 in Seattle Public Schools money spent for reasons unclear.

Johnson remains a question mark to investigators with the state Auditor’s Office, who reported last week that a Seattle Public Schools program aimed at training small contractors spent $1.8 million in district money in questionable ways. Several district employees reported that money was used to funnel cash to friends of the program director, ex-district employee Silas Potter, and leaders from Seattle’s black community. Once a favorite of higher-ups with the district, Potter — who joined the district as a mover and left a decade later as the head of his own program — has become a bit of a mystery, too. Asked to talk to the auditors, he vanished. Filing for divorce late last year, his wife said he’s in Tampa, Fla.

According to a series of reports released last week, Potter, then director of the district’s Regional Small Business Development Program, was holding weekly meetings with a small group of power players with deep ties to state government and suspect contracts with the district. Absent from those meetings – and the memory of most of those involved in the program – was David Johnson. Click here for more from this report from seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen.